


Bone, Blood and Sinew

by lotherington



Series: Once Below a Time [2]
Category: Atonement (2007), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Crossover, Historical, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:55:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotherington/pseuds/lotherington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1939. Two years on from an ill-fated summer's day, Sherlock and John meet in London.</p><p>AU Crossover with Ian McEwan's <i>Atonement</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Prepare a Face

_September, 1939._

The poppy on the table in the hospital café was a day past its best. It had wilted and one wide, red leaf had fallen onto the stark white tablecloth, where its delicate skin had shrivelled. Sherlock sat, straight-backed, staring at the door, his fingers gripping the handle of one of the teacups from the service that had been laid out.

John appeared in the doorway. Sherlock shot to his feet, upending the dregs of tea in his cup. He blinked and breathed deeply as John walked towards him, clad in a drab khaki uniform. Whilst Sherlock had grown into his features and lost his coltish appearance of two summers ago, John had withered. His eyes were hollow as he strode towards Sherlock through the crowd, his usually swarthy skin pale, his hair flecked with grey in places.

Around them, crockery and cutlery clanged and the sound of people talking coalesced into one low hum. The piano in the corner cut through the background noise, playing a pleasant enough melody.

‘Sherlock,’ John said, at the same time as Sherlock’s taut,

‘Hello.’

John removed his cap and brushed his hair back into place with the palm of his hand. ‘Should we sit down?’

Sherlock fell back to his chair. He poured John some tea, righting his own teacup once again.

‘I’ll get a fresh pot, that will have gone bitter by now-’

‘How are you?’ John said. ‘How’ve you been?’

Sherlock stopped his frantic movements and looked down at the poppy.

‘Terrible,’ he said, his voice barely there at all, his eyes very far away.

John added sugar and milk to his tea. He stirred it, the spoon scraping against the china. He looked at Sherlock and shifted closer in his chair, just barely.

‘How are... how are your family?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’ Sherlock’s gaze snapped to John’s eyes. ‘I packed and left the very next day, I told you I did - Mycroft was lurking outside my flat last week but I pushed past him, I won’t ever--’

‘Sherlock,’ John whispered, catching Sherlock’s sleeve, brushing his thumb across the bone that jutted out from Sherlock’s wrist. He took a deep breath. ‘It’s... it’s alright.’

Sherlock sighed and stared out of the high window, at the cornflower blue September sky.

‘Where is it you’re living?’

‘A flat in Marylebone, on Baker Street. For what I pay it’s--’

‘Take me there.’ 

Sherlock blinked.

‘Take me there,’ John repeated.

***

‘Would you like a drink?’ Sherlock said, oddly quiet, oddly polite, as he locked the door behind them, removing his hat and jacket and throwing both over the back of the sofa.

John shook his head. He dropped his cap onto a chair and caught Sherlock’s hands in his own.

‘I’m to report tomorrow morning. At the station. I haven’t got long.’

Sherlock stepped closer, his eyes downcast. ‘No-one...’ he entwined his fingers with John’s. ‘I’ve only ever been yours.’

‘You mean to say you haven’t--’

‘No.’

John nodded, lips parted as his breathing deepened.

‘Kiss me,’ Sherlock murmured, grabbing John’s shirt sleeve, pulling him closer. ‘John, kiss me.’

Sherlock swayed on his feet when their lips met. He lifted his hand to John’s chest and plucked at his shirt, a whimper escaping his throat. He staggered backwards, pulling John into his bedroom, through the kitchen, falling onto his back on the bed, wrapping his arm around John’s neck and holding him close.

John was wild and desperate when he pushed into Sherlock. Sherlock hissed and clenched his fist around one of the slats in his headboard, arching his back as he adjusted. 

It was not gentle.

***

Sherlock’s narrow bed barely contained the two of them; Sherlock’s limbs spilling out from underneath the sheets.

‘It’s cruel. That you can’t... that you can’t stay, it’s cruel.’

‘You know what would happen.’ John’s eyes were dull as he stared at the ceiling, hands linked together behind his head. Sherlock spread his fingers on John’s abdomen. ‘You knew this was going to happen.’

The marigolds in the window box outside bobbed in the early evening breeze. Sherlock pressed his lips to John’s side, just below his underarm, and closed his eyes. ‘Doesn’t make it any less unfair,’ he murmured, breathing in John’s scent from his skin.

‘I don’t really feel you’re in a position to talk about fair and unfair, Sherlock,’ John snapped, sitting up, dislodging Sherlock from his chest and fumbling for a cigarette from the crumpled box on the bedside table. He swung his legs out so his feet were resting flat on the floor; lit his fag with shaking fingers.

‘John.’ Sherlock’s voice was timid, small, almost a question.

‘Don’t.’ John inhaled greedily, closing his eyes as the smoke filled his lungs.

Sherlock rested one of his spindly hands on John’s back, only to have it shaken off.

‘All that time inside and you’ve been fine. You’ve been fine and safe and comfortable here and I...’

Sherlock looked around guiltily at the logs ready to burn in the grate, his high-end cigarettes on the bedside table, the fine tweed coat hanging on the back of the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I would have done anything... _anything_ to make this right, I...’

‘It’s done, now. Over.’

‘I love you.’

John took another deep breath from his cigarette. 

‘Don’t be angry.’ Sherlock pressed his lips to John’s shoulder; rested his forehead at John’s nape. ‘Please don’t be angry.’

Smoke billowed up to the ceiling from John’s mouth.

‘John.’

‘I...’ John spread the fingers of his right hand wide. ‘I can’t... I can’t help how I feel, Sherlock. I can’t help but be...’

‘This wasn’t my fault,’ Sherlock said.

‘And neither was it _mine_!’ John roared, standing up, throwing the sheets away from himself, back onto the bed. 

Sherlock stayed silent, flushing as he looked at John’s back, the muscles there tight and tense. 

‘I want everything to be lovely and perfect and two years ago again, believe me, I do, but there’s no escaping the fact that I just spend two years of my life in prison whilst you--whilst you--’

‘I’m sorry!’ Sherlock shouted back, clutching one of the thin sheets to himself as he stood and moved towards John. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, don’t, please don’t--’

John grabbed Sherlock’s face in his hands and kissed him wildly, forcing their bodies close together. Sherlock fell back to the bed, pulling John on top of him, spreading his legs, pulling John down further, closer.

‘Please,’ Sherlock breathed, touching the tip of his nose to John’s. ‘Please.’

‘You told me you’d fix it,’ John said, voice shaking as he toyed with Sherlock’s fingers, eyes darting all over the darkening room. ‘You told me you would and you didn’t.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sherlock whispered, eyes shut in pain. ‘I’m sorry, I tried... I’ve loved you for every second since I last saw you and I tried...’

John nodded, frowning, eyes closed.

‘They wouldn’t listen. No-one would listen, they called me hysterical, I... I’m so sorry. I love you. Believe me.’

Nodding again, John squeezed Sherlock’s hand.

‘I love you,’ he murmured. ‘I could never stop.’

***

John slipped away the next morning. He kissed Sherlock’s sleep-warm forehead, left a lock of hair and a note:

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I will only ever be yours._


	2. And Indeed There Will Be Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1939-40. Sherlock and Mycroft meet in London. For John, France is hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long! One chapter to go. Quick warning for anti-French and anti-German sentiment from a minor character.

_Winter, 1939-40_

Midnight blue ink flowed from Sherlock’s pen as he sat straight backed at the kitchen table of 221b. Ash dropped from the cigarette hanging carelessly out of his mouth onto the paper beneath his hands.

_Mycroft’s been sniffing around. Keeps trying to recruit me for something or other - some sort of specialist task force I couldn’t be less interested in if I tried. He says he’s realised the magnitude of what he did. Wants to speak to me. I can’t bear being in the same city as him - let alone the same room - but I’ll hear what he has to say. For you._

_Stay safe. Stay well. Come back to me._

_Always yours,_

_S._

He sipped his long-cold tea before dropping his cigarette into the chipped, mint-green cup. It extinguished with a hiss. Sherlock blew on the ink to dry it and then folded the letter, stuffing it into an envelope. He composed a P.S. in his head.

_You wouldn’t be proud of me. I steal morphine from people who need it._

He shook his head, pulled on his hat, scarf, gloves, coat. He would post the letter on the way to the hospital.

***

It was almost too easy. Sherlock pushed one of his tools into the lock on the door of the hospital’s dispensary, checked over his shoulders once, twice again, shifted the pick until he heard a click, and slipped in, closing the door behind him. He flipped the light switch to his left, bathing the narrow room in a yellowy glow. Helpfully, the medicines at Barts were stored alphabetically, and it took a matter of seconds for Sherlock to slip three vials of morphine into his coat pocket, turn the light off and exit the little room.

The blackout provided adequate cover for the simultaneous gut-twisting shame and heart-racing thrill Sherlock felt as he walked through London’s streets. He was sure his ill deeds were written all over his face as he headed back towards the comfort and safety that was 221b.

In a couple of years, when all of this was over, he and John would carve out a nice little life for themselves on Baker Street. A quiet, private life; theirs and theirs alone. Sherlock would do something that interested him and John would be able to qualify as a doctor, do shifts at the hospital. Yes. A good life. A quiet life. 

Sherlock turned his key in the front door of 221 and made his way up the stairs. Rather than the drone of the wireless, he opted for Chopin on the gramophone. He laid out the vials he’d stolen and a syringe needle on the coffee table, rolling his left sleeve up to his mid-bicep.

A knock at the door downstairs. Clenching his jaw in irritation, Sherlock intended to ignore it until the second, more insistent ring. Sherlock breathed out and went downstairs, throwing the door open wide enough that light spilt out onto the street.

‘The ARP warden will eat you alive for that,’ Mycroft said, stepping inside before Sherlock could slam the door. His index finger tapped against the handle of the umbrella he’d taken to carrying around. 

Sherlock shut the door slowly. ‘Wait here.’

‘If you’re going to try and hide the drugs I know you’ve stolen, don’t bother,’ Mycroft replied with a grim look on his face. ‘Although I do wonder what John would--’

‘You have no right to so much as imagine what he would think or say,’ Sherlock snarled, his face growing red. ‘No right.’

Mycroft looked intently at the wallpaper. ‘I have something I’d like to discuss with you. Concerning him.’

‘Out with it, then.’ 

Chopin’s Nocturne No. 5 drifted downstairs from Sherlock’s flat. 

‘I hardly think the hallway is an appropriate place for a conversation.’

‘I hardly think you’ve got any sort of right to be dictating what is and what isn’t appropriate.’ Sherlock glared at his brother, his contempt plain to see. ‘Not based on your track record.’

‘Sherlock--’

‘Don’t _Sherlock_ me, Mycroft, I’m not twelve years old anymore. What do you want?’

Exhaling, Mycroft shifted his weight from one leg to the other and tightened his grip on his umbrella. ‘I thought it would be prudent to inform you that I have reached a position of sufficient influence that John’s criminal record could be made to disappear.’

Sherlock laughed aloud. ‘I could break into the Old Bailey and destroy the files myself.’ The nails of his right hand bit into his palm.

‘I would very much like to make amends--’

‘There’s no conceivable way that you will _ever_ be able to make amends for what you did,’ Sherlock said, his voice low and quiet.

‘John may not see it that way--’

‘Oh, I can tell you now that he certainly does,’ Sherlock said, eyes widening. ‘And that out of the two of us, he’s far less forgiving than I am.’

Mycroft looked down at the carpet.

‘You can’t just magick everything away.’

‘What can I do? What can I do to make this right?’ Mycroft asked, his voice tinged with a hint of desperation.

‘Nothing,’ Sherlock said. ‘You can do nothing.’

‘A university place. Compensation--’

‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ Sherlock frowned, shaking his head, and put his hand on the doorknob. ‘Leave,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure one of your superiors wouldn’t be happy if I told them you’re wasting government resources on having your sodomite brother followed about. There is a war on, after all.’ He opened the door onto the deep darkness of the blacked-out street. ‘Leave me alone.’

Mycroft regarded Sherlock for a moment, sadness pulling at the lines around his eyes and mouth.

‘Goodbye,’ he murmured, stepping out onto Baker Street.

Sherlock closed the door firmly and went back upstairs. 

***

_May, 1940_

France was hell. France was hell and that was no exaggeration on John’s part. Horses lay abandoned in ditches, limbs splayed outwards, flies clustered around their empty eye sockets, sucking at what little flesh was left on the bone. The countryside for miles around was mud churned like butter: muck and filth and destruction. A smallholding crumbled at its foundations, the crops turned over, roots lying straggled above the ground. John felt ill.

A lorry made its slow, weary way up the road that John and his company were walking at the side of. Wounded men sat in its open back, legs hanging listlessly towards the bloody, muddy earth. John nodded at the lad with a grubby bandage wrapped across his right eye. He didn’t nod back. 

‘Can’t we just hitch a lift on the back of one of these?’ The soldier travelling with John said.

John pointed towards the sky. ‘We’d be sitting ducks, Nettle,’ he said quietly, so as not to attract the attention of the NCO at the front. ‘Best to keep walking.’

And walk John did. He felt that his life had become a never-ending march towards some unspecified goal he was always kept in the dark about. He knew the story, though. A tactical retreat. France was beyond help and they were running away. Back over the channel. Back home.

They passed another farm. The sun was just going down behind the roof of the farm, where a middle-aged man stood in the broken doorway of his home. Bricks crumbled at his feet, the gate to the field lying in splintered ruin on the soil that had not been ploughed or tilled or had anything sown into it. John lifted his tired gaze to the man’s eyes, turning away with a sigh when the man spat on the ground. 

‘I fucking saw that,’ Nettle hissed. ‘Frog cunt. He won’t be fucking laughing when Hitler and his mates bomb the shit out of his fucking farm again.’

‘Nettle,’ John murmured, his tone almost pleading.

‘Alright, guv.’ They tramped on. ‘Alright.’

***

_Sherlock,_

_This is hell. This whole bloody thing is hell._

John did not write that. Instead, he wrote:

_S,_

_Wait for me. Wait for me. I’ll come back to you._

_I love you._

_Always yours._

_John._

***

Their numbers marching forwards grew by the day. The formal ranks had broken up and had been replaced by soldiers, British and French, and refugees weaving between the traffic that drove slowly on to the salt-tainted air of the coast. John’s eyes were heavy with both boredom and exhaustion as they neared the end of a village. The discipline of the earlier march, when they were fewer in number, had disappeared almost entirely. As a result, John was stuck listening to Private Nettle set the world to rights.

‘I can’t believe those fuckers in the war office are letting us get bleeding bombed out of France. Probably tucked up nice and safe in some bunker somewhere, seeing how else they can feed us to the fucking wolves. And my feet are killing me!’

John continued to march forwards, face hard. He pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one with shaking fingers, inhaling the smoke quickly.

‘Let ‘em have this shithole, that’s what I say,’ Nettle exclaimed, waving his hand around to gesture at the village they were currently tramping through. ‘It’s all about empire, ain’t it? We’ve got India and Africa, let Jerry have France and Belgium and wherever fucking else they want. Who the fuck’s ever been to Poland, anyway?’

John closed his eyes and continued to walk, releasing the smoke from between his lips. He pressed his hand over the right side of his breast, where Sherlock’s letters sat in a pocket, folded and dog-eared and stained with dirt and blood and tea. 

‘Let ‘em have the fucking place. The French fucking hate us as it is - they can have their empire, we can keep ours, and Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your fucking aunt.’

‘Nettle would you for once in your bloody miserable life shut up?’ John shouted, inhaling again, almost frantic.

‘I’m just saying, guv--’

‘Well, don’t.’ John stopped, his breath coming short. He pulled his tin hat off to let his head breathe and turned his face towards the sun, pushing his sweaty, dirty hair back off his face.

‘Guv,’ Nettle muttered, shoving John’s shoulder and pointing upwards. 

‘Fuck,’ John groaned as he opened his eyes and looked where Nettle motioned. ‘Where the bloody hell are the RAF?’ he blurted out, sighing in horror when one of the tiny specks in the wide expanse of blue above peeled away from the rest and nose dived towards them. It took a few seconds for the dull roar of the Stuka’s engine to reach them, and for shouts to begin ringing out along the road.

‘Disperse! Take cover!’

John stood rooted in place. His brain was unable to process the notion of running after so much time spent marching blindly forwards, always forwards. He took a gasping breath, his mind’s eye flashing to an image of Sherlock, twenty and haughty and perfect, waist-deep in the fountain of the big house. He closed his eyes and stood still. Sherlock, in ecstasy against the bookshelf; hands pressed to the back window of a police car, scared and shaken; awkward and bumbling in a hospital café; sleeping peacefully in his private, cosy flat; His Sherlock. 

The wailing of a child forced John’s eyes open as the moan of the Stuka grew closer. A woman stood a few feet from him in the middle of the road, turning this way and that, unable to choose between the farmyard and the field. Her child cried from within its shawl, pressed tightly against its mother’s breast.

‘We have to move,’ John muttered, mostly to himself as his legs began to work at long last and he darted forwards, grabbing the woman by the shoulder of her dress and hauling her towards the field.

They moved slowly as the plane grew ever closer. The child - a boy - was too much of a burden for his mother to carry. John dragged him from her arms and shifted him onto his hip, reaching behind to grab the woman by the wrist. He began to run for the centre of the field, away from the thousand-pound bomb the Stuka was sure to have aboard. The pilot wouldn’t waste such precious cargo on a few figures picking their way through a field, not when there were villages and towns and cities left unscarred and unbroken. 

The boy screamed in John’s ear, clawing over John’s shoulder for his mother, who stumbled behind, weeping. To add to the din came the screeching of the falling bomb, and John prayed the noise wouldn’t end for them before the explosion hit. He had to get to back to Sherlock. He had to. As he fell to the grass he pulled the woman with him, shoving her head down and lying atop the still-wailing boy. The shockwave tore them from the earth, dirt stinging John’s face. The first Stuka groaned its ascent as the screech of the next bomb sounded.

John struggled to his feet, the boy in his arms. He pulled the woman up. ‘We have to run again, we’re too close to the road!’ he shouted. Again they stumbled through the field, along with hundreds of others, all making for the woods on the far side. The woman staggered, hanging back, trying to take her son from John. The shrill wine of the bomb increased and again John shoved the woman to the ground, dropping to press his own face into the now newly-turned earth.

The bomb hit the far side of the road, some distance away. Again John stood, motioning towards the woods and the planes as he shouted at the woman, ‘We have to move!’ She shook her head and pulled her boy, silent with shock, from John’s arms. She wouldn’t move. Machine gun fire burst through the mud of the field. A soldier went down, wounded, and began to scream. 

‘Take my hand!’ John roared, holding his hand out to the woman, who only shook her head, sobbing, stroking her child’s hair with an incredible gentleness. She whispered to the boy quietly in French. She wouldn’t move. 

John took a step back and ran, the mud clinging to his boots, making movement extraordinarily difficult. He growled in frustration, sweat mixed with dirt dripping down his face, arms and legs aching, blisters bursting inside his boots as he fought with the mud. A bomb hit the heart of the village, behind John, and he turned to look for a fraction of a second before a second bomb hit the field John was in, its own banshee wail drowned out by the first.

White-hot pain tore through John’s shoulder as the blast threw him several feet forwards to land face-down in the earth.


	3. Would it Have Been Worth it, After All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And would it have been worth it, after all,  
> After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,  
> Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,  
> Would it have been worth while,  
> To have bitten off the matter with a smile,  
> To have squeezed the universe into a ball  
> To roll it toward some overwhelming question,  
> To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,  
> Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At least I finished it? Very sorry it's taken a ridiculously long time. Huge thanks if you're still reading this. <3

The salt-laced air kissed John’s cheeks as he stood at the head of the path leading down to the beach. Over the sea lay England, and London, an home. The dull, throbbing pain in his shoulder seemed to lessen somewhat as he stood atop the sand dunes, staring out across the lines and lines of men in uniform.

‘Thank God,’ he breathed, running down the path so quickly and unsteadily that he nearly fell. He spotted a Navy commander and ran to catch him by the arm.

‘Sorry Sir, only just arrived, can you tell us what we’re supposed to be doing?’

‘Nothing, just wait,’ the commander spat, marching forwards.

‘Well, aren’t there any ships?’

‘Three came in yesterday, Luftwaffe blew them to buggery. I lost three thousand men in one day.’

‘I... I, you see, I’m expected back--’

‘There’s over 300,000 men on this beach, private, you’ll have to wait your turn. Just think yourself lucky you’re not wounded. I’ve been ordered to leave the wounded behind.’

‘Horrible shit,’ John muttered at the commander’s retreating back.

‘Leave it, guv,’ Nettle murmured, resting his hand on John’s shoulder. ‘It’s alright.’

‘It isn’t though, is it?’ John said, looking off into the middle distance, far away over the sea.

‘Let’s find somewhere to wait. Get some rest, a bit of peace.’

John turned his sweaty, yellowing face to Nettle. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Alright.’

***

_S--_

_I’m coming back. I’m coming back to you._

_I love you._

_J._

John folded the letter and tucked it inside the breast pocket of his uniform. His shoulder twinged, the pain of it sending him sick and dizzy. He couldn’t let on, though. He couldn’t let on he was injured. He’d be left behind, then where would he be? On a fucking beach in France with a lump of shrapnel embedded in his shoulder, left to rot. It would be fixed as soon as he was back home. Everything would be alright.

John tucked his pen away as well, and lay down on his side, kit bag tucked underneath his head.

‘That’s it, guv,’ John heard Nettle say, as though from far away. A blanket was brought up, enough to cover his shoulders. ‘You go to sleep. Don’t worry about a thing. It’s all going to be alright. Everything’s going to be fine.’

***

‘Sir.’ A young woman in uniform dropped a telegram onto Mycroft’s desk.

‘Thank you.’ Mycroft did not lift his eyes from the report in his hands.

‘Sir, I’m sorry, but this is information you specifically requested to receive if and when it became available.’

‘Oh.’ Mycroft straightened his back and unfolded the telegram, dropping the report onto his desk.

REGRET REPORT PTE J H WATSON DIED DUNKIRK 3RD JUNE 1940 STOP LETTER TO FOLLOW

Mycroft said nothing.

‘A friend of yours, Sir?’

‘Once upon a time, yes.’ He re-folded the thin paper of the telegram. ‘Is there no more information?’

‘Not at present, Sir, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s quite alright.’ Mycroft rested his hand on the telephone. ‘You may go now.’ He dialled Sherlock’s number.

‘Yes?’

‘Sherlock.’

‘I thought I made the fact that I never wanted to hear from you again perfectly clear, Mycroft.’

‘I... I’m only telephoning because...’

There was a silence. Mycroft took a deep breath. ‘I wanted to see how you are.’

The telephone slammed down at the other end.

***

Nettle checked the door number against the number on the bloodstained letter he held in his hands. He took a deep breath and rang the bell, tucking the letter back into the large envelope he’d acquired for the purpose.

A young man opened the door. He had deep purple bags under bloodshot eyes and miles of pale skin on show. His eyes flicked up and down Nettle, from head to toe. He said nothing.

‘I-- I’m looking for an S Holmes,’ Nettle said. ‘Sarah, maybe, or...’ He trailed off at the look on the man’s face. There was silence between them for a long moment.

‘John’s things,’ the man said, staring at the plain brown envelope. ‘You’ve brought me John’s things.’

‘I--’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

Nettle nodded.

The young man staggered backwards and sank to sit on the bottom step of the narrow staircase, burying his face in his hands. 

‘Are--’ Nettle stepped into the house and shut the door gently behind him. ‘Are you S Holmes?’ he asked, kneeling down in front of the man, placing the envelope on the floor.

The man nodded.

‘And the guv’nor-- Watson-- John-- you and him were--’

The man nodded again, taking a shuddering breath inwards. Nettle noticed his milky-white forearms were bruised with a collection of marks ranging from deep purple to pale yellow.

‘Guessing... guessing your name ain’t Sarah, then.’

‘It’s Sherlock,’ Sherlock said, raising his face to the ceiling and taking a deep breath. ‘I... I suppose you’d better come up.’

He stood and turned to walk up the stairs, leading the way into 221b. Nettle followed. The flat was in ruin. Nettle could tell it might once have been very nice, all patterned wallpaper and comfortable chairs and fine bone china. But now the delicate china held cigarette ends and splintered needle shafts, the chairs stained with wine and who knows what else, the wallpaper peeling and blackened with mould. A sharp scent of body odour and sickness hung heavy in the air. 

‘Tea... you’ll be wanting tea,’ Sherlock mumbled, scratching his head as he strode across the living room, through the screen door and into the kitchen. Nettle took his cap off.

‘No matter, guv,’ he said. ‘I’m really only here to drop these off.’

Sherlock froze, his fingers wrapped around the handle of the kettle. ‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He walked back into the living room and sat on the edge of a chair, clutching his forehead with his hands. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not...’ he waved a hand. ‘I’m not quite right these days.’ He lifted his eyes to Nettle. ‘Did it hurt?’

‘Did what hurt, chap?’ Nettle said kindly, his voice soft.

‘When John... when he... did it hurt?’

‘I can’t say for certain.’ Nettle knelt down on the stained carpet next to Sherlock and rubbed his sweaty palms on his trousers. ‘He caught a piece of shrapnel in the shoulder. Weren’t any doctors around, weren’t anything to clean it, he just. He got ill. Very quickly. Over in an afternoon. Last thing he did was write to you.’

Nettle pushed the envelope across to Sherlock, who had tears rolling in a long, unbroken stream down his face.

‘He was going to be a doctor,’ Sherlock said through his tears, barely audible. ‘John was going to be a doctor.’

***

1989

‘Sherlock died on the fifteenth of November, 1940. He was twenty-five. For some time, I thought him to be just another victim of the Blitz, in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was until the results of the examination I’d ordered on his body came back. He died of an overdose of injected morphine in his flat. A bomb fell on the house before anyone could find him and they dragged his body out from under a piano amongst the rubble a few days later. I never did tell Mummy.’

Mycroft paused and sipped his tea. It had long since gone cold.

‘I acted thinking I was protecting him from certain ruin, but all I achieved in the end was effectively killing the one person I imagine could have been his saviour.’

The young reporter across the table in the hotel restaurant frowned.

‘Why tell me all of this? Why now?’

Mycroft looked out of the window onto the busy London street. The sun shone. Pigeons pecked at crumbs on the pavement. Black taxis and red buses moaned their way along the road.

‘Atonement?’ he murmured, stroking the wooden handle of his umbrella. ‘I don’t really know.’


End file.
